Monday, April 30, 2012

Bread or Blood ? The Cry from People of Wales in 1831 when they first raised the Red Flag in Wales.

“The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises ?

On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones.

That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.

The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.

But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons — the modern working class — the proletarians.”

Marx & Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party,1848

165 years after its writing, this quote remains relevant. It allows us to understand the situation in which the proletariat and the broad popular masses in all countries find themselves, regardless of who leads the government: they live under a concealed dictatorship, be it a bourgeois democratic or a brutal one.

The imperialist bourgeoisie is looking for the maximum rate of profit; it is using the crisis as a pretext to achieve this objective by restructuring the system of production. Within this, the ruling classes in the oppressed countries try to maintain and possibly increase their share in the surplus. Such restructuring is affecting all countries; for the working class and the masses, it means the delocalization of large industries: plant closings, wage cuts, unemployment, debt, impoverishment, etc. But in the places where the new plants are to be opened, restructuring means land grabs, expropriation of local farmers, frenzied exploitation, poverty wages, destruction of the environment, etc.

The ruling classes use the state apparatus to suppress the proletariat’s struggles and prevent them and the masses from revolting and organizing for the revolution. Everywhere, the State is more and more becoming a police state that brings the population under surveillance and repression.

Whether it is the “left” or right, no segment of the bourgeoisie has the capacity to solve the crisis. The persistence of the crisis prepares the ground for fascism; fascism is advancing in disguise. It is building step by step through populist demagogy, relying on the economic crisis. In due time, it will show its true colors by aggressively defending the interests of finance capital. Meanwhile, competition between the different monopolist blocks raises the question of redivision of markets and therefore suggests new wars are on the horizon.

The class nature of the state is the central issue.The form it takes is only circumstantial. The primary purpose of the state is to serve the interests of the ruling class, that is to say, those of the imperialist bourgeoisie and/or of the comprador-bureaucrat bourgeoisie and landlords in the oppressed nations —which is a tiny minority compared to the vast majority of men, women and children who are facing exploitation worldwide. Given the crisis, this is becoming clearer to the masses. The central task of any revolution is to radically destroy the state apparatus and, thereafter, to build on its ruins a new and radically different state, with the objective of building socialism as a means of transition to communism. In other words, revolution is the only answer to the crisis!

Today, the proletariat and the masses are struggling and rebelling in many countries. These rebellions are expressed in different and varying ways: through general strikes, by fighting against high prices, against layoffs, for the right to work, against the crushing of militant trade unions, for the right to land, to protect the environment, through occupation of housing and empty land, youth rebellions against police violence and a life without work and without future, struggles of women, etc.

In the Arab countries, after the uprisings that lacked a revolutionary leadership, the ruling classes and imperialism are regaining control of the situation in the name of “democracy;” they are enforcing the same rule of exploitation against the people by opposing the continuation of the revolutionary process. The protest movement’s focus is being diverted by imperialist interventions, by reactionary forces, secular or religious reformists are crushed bloodily.

In the Arab oppressed countries, as well as in all the colonial and semi-colonial countries, it has become more and more important to develop the New Democratic Revolution, as part of the socialist revolution.

In the imperialist countries, the “Occupy” movement is reflecting the massive discontent of the people, but it does not sufficiently challenge the system in its entirety. These proletarian struggles and rebellions are not revolutionary in and of themselves but they are a first step in the realization by the masses of the necessity of revolution. However it is important to unmask the path and illusions of a peaceful change, alternation, and deceitful elections.

Today’s communists (the Maoists) must participate in and gradually take the lead of those struggles. They must build the revolutionary force of the proletariat at the ideological, political and organizational levels, and especially the three essential tools of revolution: a Maoist Communist Party, a revolutionary United Front, and an Armed Force, according to the particular situation.

We must struggle against reformists, revisionists and opportunists who lead the protest struggles with a conciliatory spirit in the existing trade unions and mass organizations; they only offer “solutions” within the current capitalist and imperialist system, spreading the illusion among the masses that the electoral and peaceful path may be a solution for the proletariat and the masses to overcome the crisis. They are an obstacle to the expansion of class struggle and the organization of the working class and the masses for revolution.

Meanwhile, the reactionaries are using differences of origin, religion and racism to divide the proletariat, the working class and the popular masses, as a trick to preserve their power.

Everywhere we must popularize and support the people’s wars currently being waged as spearhead of the fight against the crisis of imperialism.

Led by the CPI (Maoist), the People’s War in India is successfully resisting attacks from the enemy and is managing to expand and grow. The People’s War is also unfolding in the Philippines under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines, which upholds Maoism. In Peru, it is continuing despite the action from a liquidationist current. In Turkey, the revolutionary struggle led by the Maoists is advancing in accordance with the people’s war strategy. In other countries, new initiatives and advances are in preparation.

We must fight in a situation of uneven development to end the capitalist system over the whole world and build a new world free from exploitation, from peoples’ oppression and deadly wars, for a socialist and communist world.

We must work to rebuild the international organization of communists, based on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism; we must apply MLM to the concrete reality of today, to jointly develop the struggle for revolution and establishing a Communist International of a new type.

Long Live Internationalist May Day !Long Live Proletarian Internationalism !

In view of the fact that our Cymric land is being desecrated by rapacious landlords, hereditary aristocrats, the English Crown and Corporate Utility Companies, this Petition demands of the Westminster Parliament and the Welsh Government the restoration of the land, by compulsory purchase, to its rightful owner, the People of Cymru, in order to preserve our heritage, the great beauty of this land and the common right of our people to access and make use of it until perpetuity.

April 22, 20121 – How is the recent situation concerning the two line struggle in your party? Have any of the most important contradictions been solved? (Here you can describe the whole situation about the positions of each side, on which we already have a general idea, but also underline the points that are agreed on.)For a communist party, the two-line struggle is the source of its life. As an object does not exist without contradiction in it, a communist party too does not exist when there is no two-line struggle. However, the two-line struggle does not always have the same level but varies depending upon the content of the issues involved in it. The two-line struggle in our party has sharpened mainly after the first meeting of the Constituent Assembly, which established the federal democratic republic of Nepal. Monarchy has been abolished from Nepal but not feudalism. Nepal is still a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country. External intervention is in the rise. The essence of the ongoing two-line struggle is centred on how to understand this situation and whether to continue with status quo i.e. the semi-feudal and semi-colonial condition beautified by cosmetics of the democratic republic or continue struggling to establish People’s Federal Republic in its place.A few months before, when our CC meeting had just started, chairman Prachanda brought about a long interview in which he revealed so many things on the questions of line. In that interview he categorically said that there is no need now to make a new democratic revolution in Nepal, because the gap between the new democratic revolution and the socialist revolution has narrowed. The major part of it has already been accomplished and the rest can be accomplished when the socialist revolution comes in the agenda. He added that the major task before the party was to develop productive forces by creating conducive atmosphere for the donor countries. This way, he does not even stand in favour of national economy and the national bourgeois. In fact he has been integrated in the imperialist system.Dissolution of the people’s power, submission of the PLA into the hands of Nepal Army through a kind of coup on April 10, 2012, returning of land to the landlords, signing of anti-national treaties like BIPPA and other shameful treaties on water resources with India etc. have made Prachanda-Baburam clique stand in service of Indian expansionism, the regional watchdog of the US imperialism, and their puppets in Nepal. Through this process this clique has betrayed the nation and the class as well.When the leaders nakedly surrender before imperialism and their running domestic agents, then the two-line struggle does not remain an issue of the party alone. Rather it becomes an issue of the nation and the entire oppressed people as a whole. It must be taken to the masses so that their anti-people and anti-national crimes could be unveiled. Hence, the two-line struggle which we are taking to the masses now is an ideological and political campaign to make the entire oppressed class, nation, sex and region stand by the side of revolutionaries and expose the right revisionists who betrayed the nation and people in the garb of Marxism.The last Central Committee meeting has taken up a method to deal with organisational problems. First, no committee at any level will take decisions on the basis of majority and minority and second, if there is no unanimity then either ideological group will have right to organise their separate committee meetings, take decisions and implement in their own. In other words, every ideological group in our party is free to take decisions and implement them in practice. Democratic centralism is not active in our party now. The line struggle in the party is now openly taken to the masses. We think the synthesis of this whole process will equip us with deeper ideological grasp to lead the revolution forward.2 – How is the situation with the People’s Liberation Army? Has the army been dissolved now?When the formation of People's Liberation Army, Nepal was declared from its first conference in 2000, Chairman Prachanda had said that that PLA would be such a militant strength of the world proletariat that will prevent counter-revolution in the twenty-first century. Surprisingly, after 12 years on April 10, 2012, the "Supreme Commander" of the PLA, chairman Prachanda ordered the Nepal army to stage a coup against the very PLA he gave birth to by encircling their camp and forcing them to surrender. He claimed that it was a bold decision taken on his part but in fact it was a cowardly decision of capitulation before the imperialism, expansionism and various shades of reaction.3 – How is the content or reflection of the two line struggle concerning the international relations of the party? What do you think about the critics of for example the Communist Party of India (Maoist)? Or other organisations who have similar positions?Before the two-line struggle surfaced, the international communist movement was critical of our party line. Some parties criticised our party in open, just for example the Communist Party of India (Maoist), Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist), Revolutionary Communist Party of USA etc. and some others placed their critical opinion internally.

However, except a few revisionist parties most of the revolutionaries were critical of the line we had adopted then. But when the two-line struggle surfaced in our party the revolutionaries all across the world have shown ideological support to the revolutionary line and the revolutionary faction led by comrade Kiran.The criticism that came from various revolutionary parties was basically correct. And some of them were based on subjective understanding of the situation. However, those criticisms were helpful for our fight against revisionism and defence of revolution and revolutionary line.4 – How does the opposition consider the Rolpa Congress in 2005? Has it played any role in the present situation?Our party had held a Central Committee meeting, not the Congress, at Chunwang in Rukum, not Rolpa, in 2005. We adopted a new tactic of the democratic republic from that very meeting. We said it was a tactical shift. It was definitely a turning point from which we took a path of the Constituent Assembly and it has made us arrive at this point. Definitely, the Chunwang line has to do with the present situation to develop. But Chunwang too did not emerge from vacuum. So, we have to have a thorough summation of the past, which we have not done till now. In order to have a rich summation I think we must focus on the Chunwang Meeting, the Second National Conference and even before. And also we have to sum up our position on "The development of democracy in the twenty-first century".5 – What does the opposition think about having a Party Congress? Is the fact of not having held a Congress for many years, one of the reasons that support the bureaucratisation inside the party?Of course, not having a party congress for quite a long time, 20 years, is one of the reasons that support bureaucratisation inside the party. But, this is not the only and the principal reason. The main reason behind the present condition to happen is the ideological and political degeneration on the part of main leadership. Party congress can be helpful to resolve the problem and it should be regularised too. But, party Congress is not possible at present, not because we don't want it to happen, but because there is no conducive environment required to organise a thorough discussion on the questions involved in the two-line struggle.6 – Do you think that the conflict can be solved without any split in the party? To what extend does the opposition would risk that?It is the revolutionaries who want a strong party to make revolution. The revolutionary strength primarily is measured by the correctness of ideological and political line and secondarily by the dimension of organisation and material strength they have. Therefore, the revolutionaries must have a principal thrust in building a correct ideological and political line and then a correct organisational line that helps unite more in the party to strengthen its material base.Chairman Mao has very explicitly shed light on who is the real splinter. He said they are the splinters who deviate from Marxism. The right revisionists deviate from the strategic vision of socialism and so they are the splinters. In this sense, Prachanda-Baburam clique is the splinter. Now we are waging a sharp two-line struggle to defend and develop a correct line. As a consequence, it is bringing about transformation in the comrades and strengthening the revolutionary pole. With the development of situation, the revolutionaries will reorganise and consolidate a revolutionary centre to lead the revolution forward and the revisionists will go after their way in the service of imperialism. Marxism and revisionism cannot go side by side for long in a communist party.

Ramon prison management transferred hunger striking Palestinian prisoner and leader, Ahmad Sa’adat to Ramle prison hospital on Sunday, April 29. Sa’adat is General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and has been in isolation for over three years in Ramon prison. He has been on hunger strike since April 17 with now over 2000 Palestinian prisoners.

PFLP prisoners were previously offered that Sa’adat’s isolation would be ended in exchange for them ending their hunger strike, which the prisoners refused, saying they are committed to achieving the full demands of the strike in unity with all prisoners, including ending all isolation, ending administrative detention, and supporting rights to family visits, education and media for prisoners.

Sa’adat has lost 6 kilograms so far on this hunger strike, which comes only short months after his last extended hunger strike, from September 27-October 20, calling for an end to isolation and solitary confinement. Hundreds of prisoners joined this strike, which ended with false Israeli promises to end isolation which were then ignored following the prisoner exchange. Sa’adat lost tens of kilograms during the previous strike.

Sa’adat was abducted in 2006 from the Palestinian Authority’s Jericho prison, where he had been held with five other prisoners, including four of his comrades under US and British guard since 2002. His imprisonment had been ruled illegal by the Palestinian High Court and he was elected to the Palestinian Legislative Council while held in Jericho. On March 16, 2006, Israeli occupation forces attacked the prison and abducted Sa’adat and his fellow prisoners. He is now one of 19 Palestinian prisoners in isolation.

From Paris in 1871 to Prague in 1968 to Cairo in 2011 and eventually the streets of New York City, cities have long been a hotbed of radical movements. Over the decades, urban protests have been spurred by everything from unemployment and food shortages to privatization and corruption. But were they also caused by the geography of the cities themselves? The question has particular resonance this week, as Occupy prepares for a series of large May 1 protests in cities around the country.

Geographer and social theorist David Harvey, the distinguished professor of anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and one of the 20 most cited humanities scholars of all time, has spent his career exploring how cities organize themselves, and when they do, what their achievements are. His new book, “Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution,” dissects the effects of free-market financial policy on urban life, the crippling debt of middle- and low-income Americans and how runaway development has destroyed a common space for all city dwellers.

Beginning with the question, How do we organize a whole city? Harvey looks at how the current credit crisis had its root in urban development, and how this development has made any political organizing in American cities virtually impossible in the past 20 years. Harvey is at the forefront of the movement for “the right to the city,” the idea that citizens should have a say in how their cities are developed and organized. Drawing inspiration from the Paris Commune of 1871, where the entire city of Paris overthrew the aristocracy to seize power, Harvey outlines where cities have organized, or could or should organize, themselves in more sane, inclusive ways.

Salon spoke with Harvey about Occupy Wall Street, the destructiveness of Bloomberg’s development of New York City, and making the city more after our heart’s desire.

You describe “the right to the city” as an empty slogan. But what does it mean?

Everybody can claim a right to the city. Bloomberg has a right to the city. But different factions in the city have different capacities to exercise that right. So when I talk about the right to make the city more after our heart’s desire, and what we’ve seen in New York City over the last 20-30 years, it’s been the heart’s desire of the rich folk. Back in the ’70s it was the Rockefeller brothers for example, who were the big players. Now we have people like Bloomberg, and essentially, they make the city in a way that is convenient to them and their businesses. But the mass of the population has almost no influence over this process. There are nearly a million people in this city who are trying to get by on $10,000 a year. What influence do they have over the kind of city that is being built? None at all.

My concern about the right to the city is not to say that there’s some ethical right way to do things out there, but it’s something to be struggled over. Whose right? To make what kind of city? My concern is that those million people who are living on $10,000 a year should have at least as much an influence as the top 1 percent. I call it an empty signifier because it’s about who gets in there and says, “It’s my right that matters, and not your right.” It will always involve conflict.

Since the 1980s, there’s been a worldwide wave of privatizations of formerly public institutions (schools, rail travel, water). How has this affected unrest among lower-income people who live in cities?

In a way that’s one of the questions I try to pose in the book: Why haven’t we done anything about it? Why haven’t we had our ’68? Why hasn’t there been more unrest, given the immense increase in inequalities in many U.S. cities and in the rest of the world? We’re beginning to see some response to it with Occupy Wall Street, and in other parts of the world, we’re seeing some big signs of it. In Chile students are occupying the universities, and we saw some signs of it in the 1960s against the inequalities that existed then.

I don’t quite know why there hasn’t been more unrest. I think it has to do with the tremendous power of money to command a police apparatus. I think we’re in a very dangerous situation right now because any form of unrest is likely to be treated as a form of terrorism, as part of the post-9/11 security apparatus. What we’ve seen in places like Tahrir Square and other urban uprisings, with echoes of it in Wisconsin last year, there are signs of resistance beginning to emerge. There’s a parallel here to what happened back in the 1930s. When the stock market crash occurred in 1929, the real big protests didn’t start until 1933, and then you really started to see a mass movement emerging. We may be coming to that stage right now, because the depression, recession, whatever you want to call it, is not over – there’s still mass unemployment, and people are losing their houses left and right, and people are realizing that this is not just a little blip. This is a permanent condition. So I think we’re more likely to see mass unrest emerging around now. It’s not like 1987, where we had a crash and then we got out of it in a couple of years. That’s not happening in this country.

There’s a difference between an outburst of spontaneous anger, which doesn’t have a political objective, and a more measured response that we saw in the Occupy Wall Street movement. It had a message that it wished to convey, which was putting social inequality on the agenda, and I think they were very successful. At least the Democratic Party is talking about it, and it wasn’t talking about it a year ago. It wasn’t even mentioned. But now they’re talking about it, and you’re seeing it seep into Obama’s campaign, which kind of co-opts that rhetoric.

Why is the Paris Commune of 1871 important to today’s movements?

For two reasons: The first is that it’s one of the great revolts in history. In its own right it’s worthy of discussion and study. Another reason is that it’s part of the ideology in the pantheon of thinking on the left. It’s interesting that Marx and Engels and Lenin and Trotsky all looked to the Paris Commune as an example that needed to be learned from and to some degree followed, as it was in Petrograd in 1905 and later on during the Russian Revolution itself. It needs to be questioned and learned from.

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Civil activists like Prashant Bhushan and Binayak Sen have put out an appeal for the release of Sukma Collector Alex Menon. Do you agree?

The collector of a district represents the government in a district. The government has to take responsibility for whatever atrocities and killings are happening in the name of Operation Green Hunt.

It does not matter whether the collector is a good individual or not. Hundreds of people are being arrested and tortured. When there is no mechanism in place to look after their relief, the people are forced to this situation.

This is the government’s creation. There is no point in saying that these things will not happen as if everything else is all right. This is a kind of war-situation where both the government and the CPI(Maoist) are locked in a battle of tactics and counter-tactics.

Maoists have said that they don’t pick on doctors, teachers and honest officials. Why did this happen? Menon was working for tribal welfare. How do you justify his kidnap?

I don’t think Maoists intend to harm Menon. I think the kidnapping has been done to put pressure on the government and also to highlight the condition that exists in Bastar. Otherwise their voice is not heard. Such acts help the Maoists highlight the situation in interior regions.

Of late, we’ve seen a spate of kidnappings. First it was the Italian tourists, then and an MLA in Odisha was kidnapped. Do you think the Maoists are losing their ideological coherence with such acts?

Kidnapping is just a tactic. Three incidents in three months are chance happenings. Because they had a chance to get an MLA or a collector, the Maoists took it.

They have used the situation to highlight the atrocities that are taking place in that area. I don’t think there is a pattern in it. If there was an erosion of the ideology, they could have killed these two people too, but they haven’t.

They have not tortured like the police or the paramilitary forces do in custody. This clearly indicates that they are adhering to their ideology and not resorting to any kind of mindless violence.

Kier Hardie former MP for Merthyr had written in his newspaper, the Labour Leader, that

“the life of one Welsh miner is of greater commercial and moral value to the British nation than the whole Royal crowd put together, from the Royal Great-Grand- Mama to this puling Royal Great-Grandchild”

(Morgan, Keir Hardie 72-3; Labour Leader, 30 June 1894).

The current Labour Party has forgotten its Socialist Republican hero Kier Hardie, but the people of Wales have not forgotten Kier Hardie.

Since walking through time and over the yearsLeaving only a memory of the tollgates that were burnt to the groundOur land is under siege and our myths and tale and history and accentAre trampled to the groundThere are still obstacles left to defeatAnd villains and strangers are against usBut the spirit of Carnabwth calls us to follow him still

Lyrics:We'll be loyal to our landAnd we'll defend our countryDespite any oppression and betrayalWe'll maintain belief in the truthWhilst there's a sun in the skyWhilst there's a God as a guideThe Spirit of Rebeca will live in the 'Efail Wen.'

A century and a half agoAnd our country under the repression of landlords and the rights of our landA man of Carnabwth came to demand freedom of the folkTo be able to walk her land

There are still obstacles left to defeatAnd villains and strangers are against usBut the spirit of Carnabwth calls us to follow him still

We'll be loyal to our landAnd we'll defend our countryDespite any oppression and betrayalWe'll maintain belief in the truthWhilst there's a sun in the skyWhilst there's a God as a guideThe Spirit of Rebeca will live in the 'Efail Wen.'

Since walking through time and over the yearsLeaving only a memory of the tollgates that were burnt to the groundOur land is under siege and our myths and tale and history and accentAre trampled to the groundThere are still obstacles left to defeatAnd villains and strangers are against usBut the spirit of Carnabwth calls us to follow him still

We'll be loyal to our landAnd we'll defend our countryDespite any oppression and betrayalWe'll maintain belief in the truthWhilst there's a sun in the skyWhilst there's a God as a guideThe Spirit of Rebeca will live in the 'Efail Wen.'

There are still obstacles left to defeatAnd villains and strangers are against usBut the spirit of Carnabwth calls us to follow him still

We'll be loyal to our landAnd we'll defend our countryDespite any oppression and betrayalWe'll maintain belief in the truthWhilst there's a sun in the skyWhilst there's a God as a guideThe Spirit of Rebeca will live in the 'Efail Wen.' (Efail Wen)The Spirit of Rebeca will live in the 'Efail Wen.'

It is unacceptable that in 2012 that Land in Wales is owned by the English Crown and Aristocrats.

These Lands were stolen from the Welsh People and never were or never can belong to the Aristocracy or Monarchy of another country because of historic conquest.

Welsh People are being denied a say or even access to their own land because of the ownership of Welsh Land by the English Crown and Aristocrats.

Today we have the Duke of Beaufort trying to impose a wind farm on the Mynydd y Gwair in Carmarthenshire against the wishes of the local Welsh People because of his historic title to the land based on robbery and conquest.

Mynydd y Bettws is a 100% protected and very large habitat area of supreme beauty has had a Wind Farm was imposed on this community by using the Enclosure Act of 1845 by Carmarthen County Council in violation of EEC rules for the benefit of an overseas company.

All Crown and Aristocratic Land in Wales should to be returned to the people of Wales for Welsh People to decide the use of their own Land. We support the call for a new Welsh Land Act to achieve that aim.

A Welsh Land Act electronic petition to remove the Duke of Beaufort's lands and Crown Lands by compulsory purchase is now being organized throughout Wales. Sign the petition below

The Campaign for a Welsh Land Act will be launched on the Myndd y Gwair on the 10th June 2012

Statement of the Great Unrest 2012 Organizing Group for A Welsh Socialist Republican Party

In view of the fact that our Cymric land is being desicrated by rapacious landlords, hereditary aristocrats, the English Crown and Corporate Utility Companies, this Petition demands of the Westminster Parliament and the Welsh Government the restoration of the land, by compulsory purchase, to its rightful owner, the People of Cymru, in order to preserve our heritage, the great beauty of this land and the common right of our people to access and make use of it until perpetuity.